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The issue of bilingual education is a concept worth exploring. Apart from being a popular and somewhat fashionable political trend, this topic is in fact a tight knot of interdisciplinary problems which provide certain key learnings which help us better understand the existing reality around us. While bilingual education may be defined as a system of educational processes, standards and specific activities performed in two languages (normally at a fluent, native -speaking level), it should not be confused with traditional language training. Almost every educational facility in almost every country in the world has courses of foreign languages for the students, some of them being very advanced. However it is not the language training, but bilingual education that is an urgent and controversial issue in modern political, social, cultural and economic life.
While researching and analyzing the issue of bilingual education, we should avoid certain logical and methodological mistakes. The first one has been already outlined – bilingual education is not equal or even similar to language training. The language here is not an academic subject per se, it is a tool of teaching and learning. Another potential trap may be in a unilateral approach to the issue of bilingual education. Some would identify it as a matter of phsychology, theory of learning, linguistics, culturology, anthropology,sociology or politology. This problem is a combination of all of those. A diligent and careful researcher should consider as many possible factors affecting bilingual education as possible. And while he or she does so, the third problem may emerge – a purely academical, scholastic approach. While it is necessary and quite handy to use a wide range of academic sources in order to explore the topic in depth and develop a strong analytical apparatus, one’s own critical thinking is also a valuable asset which importance should not be underestimated.
In order to assess the topic of bilingual education in the most comprehensive manner, it would be reasonable to define the main questions, which we will have to clarify to ourselves in this regard. The most obvious one would undoubtedly be concerning factual and possible benefits and drawbacks of this form of education. What is the positive and negative impact of bilingual education? How does it influence an individual? A neighborhood? A region? A country? The entire international community? How can bilingual education be used by various stakeholders in the political, social, cultural and other ways? What is the possible future of bilingual education within the context of global development? What are possible threats and opportunities of the system in this regard? Those are not easy questions, and respective academic authorities do not always have the ultimate answer to them. It would be reasonable, however, to reconstruct the general concept of pros and cons of bilingual education based on the views of professional scholars.
The possible advantages of bilingual education at the level of personal development and academia are clear and obvious. Diversification of knowledge and ability to operate and think in two different languages (Garcia, p.24), obtaining higher achievements (Baker, p.17), providing students with means necessary for a better social perspective (Garcia) and higher competitiveness at a global scale (Kong, p.17) obviously speak in favor of further implementation and development of the system of bilingual education both at the national and international levels. Certain researchers also point out to the complimentary function of such system, which allows individuals to obtain additional knowledge and understanding of certain cultural references that are lacking in their own culture and could not be assessed without bilingual education (Kong, p.14). From these points of view bilingual education appears to be useful and quite harmless.
Its appraisal, however is not entirely unanimous. Certain researchers point out restraining factors for implementation and further development of the system of bilingual education. There are two major kinds of constraints that are more or less explicitly covered by respective social theories – Racial Prejudice Theory (Huddy, Sears, p.134) and Realistic Interest Theory (Ibid., p.135). According to the former one, society may be strongly biased against bilingual education because it may be perceived as a mean of transmission of certain negatively connotated traits and practices which may be (in perception of evaluators) attributed to a specific ethnicity. Although it is clear that in a democratic, politically correct society the impact of such theory is minimized through various efficient mechanisms of social, political and even fiscal nature, this problem still preserves in certain geographical areas.
The Realistic Interest Theory is far less formally offensive by nature, however it also explains the existing discrepancy between theoretical appraisal of bilingual education and its practical implementation. Even if such education may benefit people at a personal level, is it for the common good? It may provide grounds for intolerance, ethnical isolation, even separatism, let alone disbalancing of labor market and even brain leak from the country. From this point of view it may be understandable why certain southern States discourage bilingual education with Spanish or why the French and the Dutch are trying to prevent bilingual training in Arabic enclaves. Although bilingual education helps to preserve traditional values of the native-speakers’ culture, it may prevent the younger generation from social,cultural and political integration within the state.
After taking into consideration the factors provided above, it may be said once again that the issue of bilingual education is quite a tricky one. The devil here is in the details. This system, its efficiency and prospectives depend heavily on particular context of the situation – bilingual English-Hindi education may be highly appreciated in India and yet meet little or no official and public support somewhere in the West. It also depends on the side one picks. From the point of view of minorities it is natural to strive to preserve the language, the culture and the values of their people and get them transferred to the next generations even while they are away from the original homeland (presumably it may be done at their own or public expense, depending on the degree of tolerance in the society and financial performance of the nation). Bilingual education in this regard is not just a process of learning in two different languages. It becomes a powerful instrument of influence over the youth. It is also logical that the state and its respective official institutions are not always happy to leave such an instrument in the hands of individuals or organizations which have a different background and may have quite different perception of the concept of education and socially acceptable personal and professional development. It may be predicted that only time can show all the worth that bilingual education may bring to the humankind.
References:
- García, Ofelia. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective.Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.2011.
- Baker, Colin. Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism.Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.2011
- Kong, David Parker. Benefits of a Bilingual Education.South China Morning Post. Web.2001. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/265687174 ?accountid=458
- Huddie, Leonie; Sears, David O. Opposition to Bilingual Education: Prejudice or the Defense of Realistic Interests? Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1995), pp. 133-143.
